Minimum Pay and Fitment Factor Stories suddenly ended in anticlimax

“There is no scope for them anymore to continue this story and decided to end this up with the note of ‘there is no scope for change in Minimum Pay’.

There is a strong reason to come up with the title for this article as ‘Minimum Pay and Fitment Factor Stories suddenly ended in anticlimax’. Because many websites kept writing that Minimum Pay will be increased to Rs.21000 in January 2018. As we didn’t find any truth in that stories we haven’t said anything about this as it may lead the people to have false hope. Instead, we published 4 articles which claimed firmly that there was no such proposal under consideration of Government.

Finally those who cooked up a story entitled ‘Govt to Announce Minimum Pay Increase to Rs.21000’ and writing about it on day to day basis, have come forward to end this story with a note of No Scope for change in Minimum Pay. Because they clearly know it was a fake news. But some news websites who believed that this cooked up story might be true, started writing numerous article about increasing of minimum pay from Rs.18000 to Rs. 21000 and said “Good news would come after January 2018”

As January 2018 is nearing, people started asking the Leaders of Unions and Associations the following questions. is it true? Is there any proposal as such under consideration of Central government? The NC JCM Staff Side Leaders hesitated to answer this question because they were afraid of that any negative reply will backfire them.

But there was no sign of announcing Minimum Pay increase. The rumour mongers smelled the frustration of Government servants on Minimum Pay increase as it is not going to happen in January 2018 . So they started writing again that Minimum Pay will be increased after April 2018 as Anomaly Committee is going to submit its report to the Government on Minimum Pay issue after January 2018.

Now all the bridges to Minimum wage issue are burnt for them after DoPT has clearly said in its Letter to NCJCM Staff Side that the issue of Minimum Pay Increase and Revising Fitment Factor and Allowances effect date are not anomalies. According to the DOPT Letter No. F.No.11/2/2016-JCA-1(Pt.) dated 30th October, 2017, it is stated that these three important issues are not in accord with the three postulates which, as described in DoPT’s 0M. No. 11/2/2016-JCA dated 16th August, 2016 and 20th February, 2017 for treating them as Anomaly.

So Minimum pay and Fitment Factor issue will not be treated as a case of anomaly and it will not be taken up in national Anomaly Committee for discussion.

So there is no scope for them anymore to continue this story and decided to end this up with the note of ‘there is no scope for change in Minimum Pay’.

But the Committee which is constituted to Examine the Demand of revising Minimum Pay has not held any meeting to discuss this important issue. And also, it was stated in the DoPT’s Letter that Effect date of Allowances should be decided by the Central Government and hence the NC JCM Staff Side should take up this issue to the Government.

So the ways and means for settling these issues are not ruled out yet. Now it is up to the Federations, to what extent they are serious to pursue this issue to get this done either through negotiated settlement or protest.